UFC president Dane White has hit back at calls for his Octagon girls to be axed for Robert Whittaker's middleweight title clash with Israel Adesanya.
The pair clash at UFC 243 in Melbourne this weekend but Lord Mayor Sally Capp has called on the girls to be removed from the event.
While boxing and mixed martial arts continue to use ring girls, Formula One removed grid girls last year after darts stopped using walk-on girls.
And Capp said: "It’s 2019, do we really still need scantily clad women to wander around the middle of a fighting ring between rounds?
"Grid girls are no longer part of Formula One, walk-on girls are no longer part of professional darts - surely it’s time to move on.
But White told The Daily Telegraph : "Our Octagon girls, they’re as much a part of the UFC brand as anyone, they’re ambassadors for our sport.
"So for someone who has absolutely no education whatsoever about who these girls are, about what they do, what they mean to the UFC, to start going off, it’s ridiculous.
"So you can look at any sport you like, nobody treats women better than we do. And I’d suggest these people calling on them to be banned go have a look at what these girls do with the company, the type of money they’re making.
"Do that and you’ll realise these girls are as important to our brand as anyone else in the company. And that’s exactly the way we treat them."
Meanwhile, Adesanya is confident he will have no trouble figuring out Whittaker on Saturday.
“He’s a guy I can pick apart easily,” he said. “A challenge I haven’t faced before? I don’t think so. He just does what he does very well.
"There’s only a certain amount of awkwardness that he has that I haven’t seen before, but he can try to prove me wrong. From what I see, though, I’ll pick him apart quite easily."
